Publishers to authors: Don’t quit your day jobs

If you own a Kindle or an iPad, you love the fact that digital books cost a lot less than dead-tree editions. While folks without one of these devices are shelling out $25 or more for top titles, you’re only forking over $10-$15 to read the same prose.

That’s one of the reasons – combined with the plummeting costs of e-reader hardware – that e-books are taking off. But there’s a price to be paid for paying such low prices.

The Wall Street Journal reports that first-time literary authors – the writers whose high-quality fiction works aren’t necessarily mainstream – are having a harder time getting that first novel published. And when they do, they’re not making as much from them as they used to.

Much as cheap digital-music downloads have meant that fewer bands can earn a living from record-company deals, fewer literary authors will be able to support themselves as e-books win acceptance, publishers and agents say. "In terms of making a living as a writer, you better have another source of income," says Nan Talese, whose Nan A. Talese/Doubleday imprint publishes Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood and John Pipkin.

In some cases, independent publishers are picking up the slack by signing promising literary-fiction writers. But they offer, on average, $1,000 to $5,000 for advances, a fraction of the $50,000 to $100,000 advances that established publishers typically paid in the past for debut literary fiction.

The new economics of the e-book make the author’s quandary painfully clear: A new $28 hardcover book returns half, or $14, to the publisher, and 15%, or $4.20, to the author. Under many e-book deals currently, a digital book sells for $12.99, returning 70%, or $9.09, to the publisher and typically 25% of that, or $2.27, to the author.

The upshot: From an e-book sale, an author makes a little more than half what he or she makes from a hardcover sale.

Of course, the tough economy is also a factor, as is the fact that people just don’t have the time to read as many books as they used to, regardless of the format. But as e-book growth expands to eventually become the dominant reading format – Amazon.com says e-books already outsell hardbacks on its site – this situation will only get worse for writers.

It also doesn’t help that the Internet has turned writing into a commodity by making it easy for anyone to publish what they have to say. That’s certainly democratizing, but it also lowers the value overall for the craft of writing. While gifted writers with sharp minds and something compelling to say will eventually find a way to be paid for doing so, the amount publishers are willing to pay for that skill has been reduced. Just ask any freelancer who’s been grinding away for more than 10 years – they’ll be the first to tell you that they’re not getting paid nearly as much as they used to.

I can personally attest to this. Since I became a computer book author in 2007, I’ve been paid successively lower advances on each of the three titles I’ve written. The technology book business also faces the reality that so much of the information that used to be compiled into book form is now available for free online.

In a Darwinian sense, the commoditization of writing is resulting in a culling of mediocre writing. With publishers being more selective, the quality of writing that makes the cut should improve. But a lot of very good writers may become discouraged in the process. We could lose important voices as a result.

Publishers could help the situation by taking less of a cut for themselves, and passing the extra cash on to the author. While they certainly need to recover marketing costs, e-books don’t have nearly the production costs of paper books. For a publisher to take 70 percent of e-book revenue seems excessive, given the minimal cost of distribution.

The Net offers one solution. Self-publishing – or what used to be called vanity publishing, which is now considered a pejorative – via the Web gives writers a chance to get their works out there. It also gives them more control over the process and the end product. Sites such as a Lulu allow authors to publish books on their own terms, and even Amazon.com now has a self-publishing business. While there have been some self-publishing successes, most of these titles don’t rise to the quality of, say, the New York Times Bestseller lists.

And it remains the goal of most literary-fiction authors to find a publisher who’ll handle the tasks of printing and marketing books for them, and get paid in the process. Thanks to the lower pricing for e-books, they’ll just be paid less for this privilege from here on out.

Google+

33 Responses

Shouldn’t there be, lower costs with the e-books? Why does the publisher need 70% of the ebook and half of the hardcover? I mean there’s no printing or shipping of an e-Book. I’d like to see some details of the cost of “publishing” an eBook rather than a hardcover. Is the binding/paper/shipping not that big a %? does the publisher take 70% of the eBook cost for the editing?

maybe this is an answer . this is from the statement of the writers union.

The National Writers Union UAW Local 1981 is the only labor union that represents freelance writers.

“Now, more than ever, with the consolidation of power into the hands of ever-larger corporate entities and with the advent of technologies that facilitate the exploitation of a writer’s work, writers need an organization with the clout and know-how to protect our interests. One that will forge new rules for a new era”.

I don’t consider e-books all that cheap. Amazon usually has really good deals on hardcover books, much cheaper than going to a local B&N and buying the book. Take for example Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. Currently the Kindle edition is $12.99 and the hardcover is $14. Not much of a savings at all. I’ve noticed this for a lot of other books too.

So it sounds like the big deal to authors is the loss or reduction in advances. I hate to tell you guys this but most people don’t get paid prior to performance. I am in sales and if I don’t sell as much I get paid less. Take a smaller advance or no advance and make more money per copy sold. If you are a good writer you will make more. Seems like a good thing to me.

Publishers will soon shrink in popularity. Eventually a company will pop up that will accept semi-self-published ebooks, and readers will rate books and build their popularity, not just critics and publishers with million dollar advertising campaigns.

With the average cost of an e-book at $12.99 vs. $28 for a hardcover book, seems like the sales volume for an e-book could potentially be a lot higher than for the hardcover type so that the author could make up for the return per unit issue (aka the Walmart approach).

What is left out of this article is the cost of printing hardcover or paperback books? Why should the author get less? Shouldn’t he be paid on the percentage of the net after expenses of printing a book? Likewise for music – if the record company can sell music digitally then they don’t have to put out the money for the CD’s expenses (artwork, printing, paper, case plastic, shipping, etc. etc.)

There would be some renegotiating going on between me and the publisher if it were my book. But I had thought they’d be making more thru digital sales since it cuts out the cost of printing and distribution.

It’s just taking the book publishing industry more time to catch up to the music, newspaper, and movie industry. All these types of traditional business models are squirming like a centipede on a pin, dead but don’t know it yet. New paradigms have yet to be found but I’m sure they will, people will always want good music, stories, and information.

Obviously, if e-books actually reduce cost and risk for publishers by avoiding printing cost and storage expenses, then they’re earning a smaller cut of the pie, not a larger one.

And of course, if this means editors and publishers shrivel and die, then readers will be one step closer to the authors they love, warts and all. The eccentricities of punctuation and illustration of an author like William Blake might have been squelched by an editor.

Perhaps publishers should move from serving readers’ tastes to serving as the muscle to ensure authors get paid for their work. As we drop the cost barriers to publishing, not only can authors access markets easier, but readers will also find it easier to steal authors’ works. In a digital age, authors will need help with securing their copyrights & getting paid when people use them.

One of the myths about publishing is that the physical medium costs money. It doesn’t; it only represents about 10% of the cost that goes into a book.

The publishing company’s costs don’t go away when you shift to electronic form. Because that’s a fixed cost, the only place you can cut when you reduce the cost of a book is the author.

As long as you expect to only pay $10 for an eBook instead of the $20 that it used to cost (or $18 without printing), then the author is getting screwed.

I tend to think that this is a very bad thing for publishing in general — if the authors aren’t getting paid, they’re going to look for ways to disintermediate the publishing company and the book store. Look for books to be written and self-published on-line, with print versions available on demand.

Don’t quit the day job until the night job pays. The only really valid reason for creating is that you have no choice. The world is full of people who would like to make a living as an author, or an artist, or a musician; the unfortunate truth is only a small minority will be able to do so. If you are creating for money, you will be disappointed. If you are creating because you love creating, then you will be fufilled.

I agree with many of the comments here that a 70% cut for publishers for ebooks is excessive. Why is it more than paper? OK, maybe printing costs are not that much, but what else does a publisher do? I can only think of 4 things – editing, proofreading, design and marketing. In my opinion, all of these put together don’t equal the contribution made by the author. The publishing houses don’t even deserve half.

It appears they are attempting to do what the record companies have been trying to do for 10 years – prop up an archaic and untenable business model.

Digital media is changing yet one more field. I would like to describe how I think this field should change, but I know nothing about publishing. I would be fascinated to read suggestions on this subject from those in the business. Dwight, you seem qualified.

I agree fully with jscott who said, “For the publisher to take 70% of the revenue of an e-book is highway robbery. It seems likely that publishers are the ones that need to get used to making less money.”

A competent author should be dealing directly with iTunes and should just blow off publishers entirely.

However, an incompetent author needs to be told he or she is incompetent. That’s why publishers are still needed. There are lots and lots of incompetent authors with inflated opinions of their own abilities.

I think you’re laboring under the assumption that all books sell a million copies. The truth is that a typical book sells many fewer copies than that.

If your book sells 50,000 copies (which is actually a good run) at $20 apiece, that’s only a million-dollar pie. The retailers take some chunk of that — 30 to 50 percent, depending — which leaves (at best) $700,000 to go around. Remember to drop that other 10% for printing costs, and you’re looking at $600,000.

That sounds like a lot, but it’s got to pay those four employees you mention, plus overhead.

Given the way the numbers shake out, I’m thinking an author is actually coming off pretty well to get 25% of an eBook sale.

(It’s worth mentioning why I know some of this stuff — one of my “night jobs” is as webmonster for a webcartoonist who’s been looking into publishing her work recently.)

This is an exciting time to be a publisher and writer. It is especially great for literary authors. 60-70% royalties from Amazon/B&N/Lulu, plus you control the copyright. Whereas previously there was no market for literary books, now you can sell a fiction title on amazon or smashwords for less than $4.

“While there have been some self-publishing successes, most of these titles don’t rise to the quality of, say, the New York Times Bestseller lists.” Let me see: Bill Oreilly, Glen Beck, Ann Coulter. The quality of the NYT bestseller list has always been laughable. I would take a typical indie-published ebook over a NYT bestseller any day. Occasionally some middlebrow titles reach the fiction list, but usually they’re the 7th book by a proven brand name (whose earlier works were better).

You’re right that advances are declining and the number of publishers who will do fiction titles is declining; the state today is that writers have to assume more of the financial risk than before (and have to do more time promoting).

Speaking of which, why doesn’t your blog have an ad/link to your book 9which I’m sure is excellent).